Causes and Effects of the American Revolution

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Cause: British leaders feared that more fighting would take place on the frontier if colonists kept moving onto American Indian lands.

Effect: This law banned British settlement west of the Appalachian Mountians. It also ordered settlers to leave the upper Ohio River Valley.

Quartering Act

Cause: Parliment punished Boston for the Boston Tea Party. This Act required colonists to house British soldiers.

Effect: Increased people's anger at Britain. It fan the flames of the revolution.

Stamp Act

Cause: The British Government needed to create money to support the Army so they created the Stamp Act of 1765. This act required colonists to pay for an official stamp, or seal, when they bought paper items.

Effect: The colonists protested against the Stamp Act immediately. Colonists formed a secret society called the Sons of Liberty.

First Continental Congress

Cause: Colonist were outraged over the closing of the Boston Harbor.

Efffect: The gathering of colonial leaders whose goal was to state the colonists' concerns and ask the king to correct the problems. They drafted the Declaration of Rights, a list of 10 resolutions to be presented to King George III.

Intolerable/Coercive Acts

Cause: Boston Tea Party

Effect: Punished Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party by closing the Boston Harbor, banning committees of correspondence, allowing British soldiers to be housed anywhere (Quartering Act) and allowing British officials to stand trail in Britain.

Townshend Acts

Cause: These acts placed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. To enforce this, British officials used writs of assistance. These allowed tax collectors to search for smuggled goods.

Effect: Colonists hated the new laws because they took power away from colonial government. The colonists responded by once again boycotting many British goods.

Tea Act

Cause: Allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonists. This would lower the price of tea and encourage colonists to stop smuggling the tea. Less smuggling would result in more tax money.

Effect: The colonists disguised as Indians and sneaked onto three tea-filled ships in the harbor and dumped over 340 chests into Boston Harbor.

The Boston Massacre

Cause: Bostonians did not like the presence of British troops and thought of them as foreign enemies. The soliders knew that they were not welcomed. Both sides resented each other, and name-calling, arguments, and fights between Bostonians and the soliders were common. On March 5, 1770, a British soldier had an argument with a colonist and struck him. A crowd gathered around the soldier, throwing snowballs and shouting insults. Soon a small number of troops arrived. The crowd grew louder and angrier by the moment.

Effect: The soliders fired into the crowd, killing five men.

Loyalist

Colonists who sided with Britain in the American Revolution.

Patriot

American colonists who fought for independence from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Parliament

A national representative body having supreme legislative powers within the state.

Debt

An amount of money owed to someone else.

"No taxation without representation"

The ideas of James Otis and Samuel Adams were summed up in this slogan which means that Parliament could not tax without the colonist's permission.

Boycott

A popular method of protest in which people refused to buy British goods.

Sons of Liberty

Secret society that protested British policy. They organized a boycott of British goods.

Writs of Assistance

Allowed British officials to search colonial homes for smuggled goods.